21 Grams|346 North Main — Jack on the sidewalk with a man who knows

Jack Jordan stands on a sidewalk on North Main and talks to a man who knows what he did. Behind them the North End restaurant is lit up, its windows doing the work a location scout dreams about: warmth on one side of the glass, a confession on the other.

This is the Pinch, the oldest neighbourhood in Memphis. Irish families settled it in the 1830s and 40s, and the name is said to have come from what other Memphians called them — pinch-gut — for how thin they looked when they arrived. Since then it has been a German quarter, a Jewish commercial strip, a Vietnamese one, and for long stretches it has been mostly surface parking. The North End has closed. Westy's, on the same block of North Main since 1983, is still there and still serves late.

Come at night, which is when the scene plays. Stand on the sidewalk with your back to the storefronts and look south: the towers of downtown a few blocks off, the Pyramid glowing behind you to the north, and a wide, empty street between. Jack unburdens himself in a place with almost no witnesses. Standing there after dark, you understand why the scene works — the Pinch is loud on game nights and completely silent the rest of the time.